Today's schools are being affected by changes in educational technology and increasing student diversity. In the new education paradigm, schools must prepare all students to think critically, solve problems quickly, and learn continuously. Schools therefore need leaders who can mobilize entire communities to accept and lead change. This paper describes how power relations in schools can limit or enhance student success and teacher growth. The discussion is based on data from a single interview with a female high school English teacher at a large high school in an ethnically diverse school system. The teacher describes how a school project designed to promote shared decision making through teacher involvement led to a lack of trust, increased staff turnover, shut out teachers perceived as trouble makers, and stymied risk taking. The paper argues that principals are the key to empowered schools and that they must be provided with professional development in order to understand empowerment from different perspectives. One way to begin to understand cultural differences is to debunk the following cultural myths: (1) that racial/ethnic differences will be dissolved in the "melting pot"; (2) that equal treatment is equitable; (3) that perceptions of what constitutes effective communication are universal; and (4) that all stereotypes are negative. (Contains 15 references.) (LMI)